Individuals and businesses changes addresses frequently, but information concerning the change of address is usually not available at the time a move becomes effective, resulting in a large waste of resources by businesses that send mailings to incorrect or former addresses. The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) has both a manual and online change of address procedure, but many times the change is entered manually by a USPS employee and it may be days before it becomes effective.
Allen et al. U.S. Pat. No. 5,422,821 describes a system wherein mail piece addresses and bar codes are scanned and checked against a forwarding address database so that forwarding to the new address can occur without first sending the mail piece to the old address. This helps improve the efficiency of the forwarding process but does not address the underlying problem that the mail has been directed to the old address in the first instance.
Address changes eventually find their way into the National Change of Address (NCOA) database maintained by the USPS. The USPS licenses this database to selected licensees who permit businesses to access copies of it to obtain change of address information. The information in this database is not current, i.e., changes of address are delayed by the time it takes the consumer to complete the COA procedure and the time it takes the postal service to key in the change of address information and add the change to the NCOA.
In a typical procedure currently in use by a mass mailer, the mailer first collects data to obtain the names and addresses of consumers it would like to contact. It obtains this information from a variety of sources, such as commercially available mailing lists, lists of customers of another entity it has entered into a transaction with, consumer surveys, lists provided by government entities (e.g., businesses listed with the Secretary of State), and customer replies such as returned rebate forms. The data is converted into a uniform working format. The mailer then compares the entries on the list in order to update the data, i.e., find and correct any old addresses and revise the mailing list to reflect the consumer's current address. The NCOA and other postal databases are used for this purpose, along with any available databases from non-postal sources. The corrected list is then purged of consumers that should not be contacted, such as persons who are on a do not mail list. The Direct Mailer's Association (DMA) maintains a list of consumers that have registered with the DMA in order to not be contacted with direct mail solicitations. At this point, the mailing is created and sent out based on the revised and corrected list. This procedure is partially effective at avoiding wasted mailings to the wrong address, but will be ineffective to the extent that the change of address database(s) such as the NOCA used to generate the mailing list are not current.
Current list processes and change of address data available to commercial businesses are not timely. Present systems are not effective in locating address change data. Businesses purchasing a NCOA license receive weekly COA updates. Current statistical data indicates that an average of 118,000 address changes occur daily, or 826,923 moves per week. Household moves create mail that cannot be delivered, resulting in lost or delayed information, mail, and parcels to consumers and results in time and money lost to a business. Present processes require that Undeliverable as Addressed mail and parcels are returned to the sender or forwarded according to standardized rules. This process is both costly and time consuming. Present systems and processes are not timely and are not readily available to the public. A need therefore remains for a system for distributing change of address database on a more rapid basis.